Horrifying, Haunting Harry
by trip-trap
Summary: Harry is a sociopath. Albus must make him a saviour, as well.  This fic comes with WARNINGS.  AU


**Disclaimer:** not mine, don't sue; thank you.

**Warnings:** Harry is a disturbed kid who fantasizes and acts out his fantasies of violence and slaughter. This chapter is fairly tame though it does depict and allude to violence to animals. Future chapters will be worse.

**Reviews welcome!**

**Horrifying Haunting Harry**

**1.**

Halloweens are the best because the earth is literally _dying_, dying, and there's a shriek thrumming all underneath Harry's feet deep underground, that death-moan, that rattle, that last gasp. Harry likes last gasps oh so much. He's a connoisseur of them: collects them from the cats owned by the woman in the corner house who has to watch him sometimes, when Aunt sends him away for scaring Dudley. Aunt is scared too: and Uncle. They know they're prey. They know Harry's not.

Harry is a monster in a little boy suit. He is such a good monster that no one suspects he is a monster. They either _know_ or they _don't know_. Aunt and Uncle and Dudley know, and the woman in the corner house knows but doesn't want to know, and her cats _definitely_ know.

Harry likes it when things die. He is satisfied when things die. The hungry openness inside him gapes a little less and Harry doesn't feel like he's being slowly swallowed.

One of these days the dying thing will be him.

Harry anticipates he'll like that, too.

oOoOo

Please, Albus, there is something wrong with the boy.

_There is something wrong with him_.

The boy is not normal.

Albus, the cats – you know, you _know_ they are not mundane cats, I breed kneazle broods – the cats are afraid of the boy. The cats are afraid of Harry.

_He is wrong. There is something so wrong about him._

You must come. Albus, you must come here. I – I fear –

oOoOo

The man is old and would be weak except he moves younger than his skin and hair and face suggest he should. He fetches Harry after school and Harry should be too afraid to follow him question-less but Harry is never afraid. The part of him inside that feels fear is broken: he knows it once existed and now is shattered because he can feel the pieces, the pieces in him, edged and digging.

The man takes Harry to the park and they sit on the bench and the man says, "Hello, Harry," and Harry says, "Hello, sir," and the man's eyes are very blue behind his glass lenses.

"I have heard concerning things," the man says. He doesn't move or talk like he's prey: if Harry were to lunge at him, the man would put him in his place. There's something satisfying about that. Knowing he could be, would be, slapped down, held down, made to submit. There are so few things that challenge Harry, and it would necessitate inspiration to discern how to kill the man. Harry daydreams it – how he'd do it – what it would be like – how that last breath would sound – while he says, innocent, "I'm sorry you've been troubled, sir."

The old man's eyes sharpen. There's a glint in them like the points of needles. They're staring into Harry's eyes, and suddenly – pressure. Delicate like a surgeon, like a scalpel, bisecting this thought from that. There's someone else in Harry's head. In his mind. In his memories. This man is in his head.

Harry knows instinctively that breaking eye contact will end the intrusion, but it's interesting and new, so he keeps looking into the man as the man looks into him. What's the man looking at?

There's that memory of the woman and the green light and the laugh, the scream, the shrieking nothing that echoes after.

There's his cupboard that he sleeps in even though Aunt said he could have Dudley's second bedroom two months ago. Harry likes his cupboard. He took his first cat there, after he'd slit its throat but before it had died.

There's Aunt and Uncle before they knew what he was, what they were to him. Aunt with her chores and Uncle with his slaps, and how Harry had been amused: wanted to laugh at them, their ways.

There's how Harry doesn't get angry or frightened or sad. He doesn't get happy. He smiles because he's been practicing it and he's confident that it looks like a normal boy smile, not the monster smile that makes people pale and back away.

There's the openness in Harry. That feeling like an open mouth except it's his heart. That gravity, that sucking hunger, that fascination with how and why things die.

There's how he likes to look at a dead face like the face of the woman from before his memories, how he likes the slackness, the glaze: how he feels satiated when he sees it.

The man looks away and he's not in Harry's head anymore. He takes his glasses off with one hand and with the other hand covers his eyes, like he could cover up all the parts of Harry he just looked at.

After a while the man takes his hand from his face but doesn't look at Harry again. "You'll have to come with me," the man says.

"All right, sir," Harry says, and doesn't ask where it is they're going. They get off the bench and stand side by side. The man takes Harry's hand and he knows this means they're going now, _going_, fitting into a small small space and then popping out of it, and they're not in the park anymore but somewhere new. This is the Halloween Harry is seven.

The months between this Halloween when he's seven and that summer when he's eight, Harry doesn't remember.

oOoOo

Harry, the man says, my boy, do you recognize me?

Yes, Harry says, dream-slow.

Do you trust me?

I trust you.

Do you believe the things I tell you?

Do you tell me true things?

Everything I tell you is the truth.

I'll believe you even if you lie.

I won't lie to you, Harry.

Okay. I believe you.

oOoOo

Harry is eight, he turned eight yesterday, it was a good day, but today is good too. Harry is eight and running around outside behind his castle (he has a castle! It is big and grand and he is the king there).

Harry is eight and there's a forest he must not go into because it's Forbidden, but Harry goes into it anyway. Oops, he's forgotten it's Forbidden! He has a good innocent face because he's a good innocent boy so the man will believe him when he says he didn't mean to wander into the forest.

Harry is eight and in a forest and something shy sidles up to him: it's all gleaming and black, a baby death dragon horse, and Harry pets it. Its breath is rotting and warm. Harry pets its long nose and strokes its mangled wings, its sleek bone.

Harry is eight and he doesn't remember where he got the knife, it seems he always has a knife, but it's in his hand and then it's in the baby death dragon horse's neck and then there's blood, oh, there's so much blood, and the baby screams and Harry drags the knife around to make a smile in the neck and the smile drools blood and the baby knocks against him and falls, falls, and it's beautiful, it's beautiful, so beautiful he can ignore that mouth inside of him as long as he's watching the baby die –

"Oh, Harry," the man says, and steps up behind Harry, puts his old hand on Harry's shoulder.

Harry looks up at him. "Was that wrong?" It felt good. Good things are usually wrong. Or, things Harry thinks are good are usually wrong. That statement is probably more accurate.

"Yes, that was wrong," the man says.

"I want to be good," Harry says.

"I know," the man says. "I'll help you to be good. Do you trust me?"

"I trust you," Harry says.

"Do you believe the things I tell you?"

"I believe you."

The man's hand tightens on Harry's shoulder. "Killing the thestral colt was a wrong thing to do," the man says. "It came to you wanting to be friends. It wanted you to care for it and not harm it."

"That's boring," Harry says. The blood hadn't been boring. The way the baby stumbled a bit before falling hadn't been boring.

"Nevertheless," the man says. "It is wrong to kill things that have done nothing wrong first."

Harry takes in this fact, turns it over and over in his mind. "If a thing has done something wrong, I can kill it?"

"Yes," the man says. "Yes, you can kill it. If you want to. If it has done something wrong."

"Okay," Harry says, still looking at the baby, at how its wings are crushed by its body. He glances up, sideways, sees the man's face like chiselled stone. "How wrong does it have to be?"

"Very wrong," the man says.

"Okay," Harry says. He's wondering if he's gone past that border yet, between Wrong and Very Wrong: he's wondering if he's a thing to be killed.

The man takes Harry's knife and brings Harry back to his castle to wash and have some lunch and leftover birthday cake. Yesterday Harry turned eight and it was a good day, but today Harry got to see a thing die and that makes it possibly a better day. He won't tell the man this. He's not ashamed, but he doesn't like being Wrong; and he likes the man, doesn't like the man to frown.

oOoOo

Albus sits in his office with Fawkes' perch close to him, Fawkes trilling at him.

"I can only hope I have succeeded in laying the groundwork," Albus says. "It has taken months, and Severus has grown suspicious of the potions I have asked him to brew, but I simply have no time to make them myself with the legilimency sessions."

Fawkes croons.

"He must go back to his family, of course. It remains the safest place for him."

A chirping note.

Albus sighs. "You are right, as always. It is no longer the safest place for _them_." He's a tired old man who doesn't want to deal with a sociopathic saviour. Yet he knows Harry wasn't born this way. His madness has a locus: the fractures in him are mappable, and he can be saved.

Albus will save him. He _will_.

What's the use of being the most powerful wizard in the world if he fails at preserving every young life given into his care?

Harry is the wizarding world's saviour, and Albus will be _his_.

oOoOo

Harry goes back to Aunt and Uncle and Dudley. The man brings him, and they are waiting with nervous smiles and twisting hands. They lead Harry up the stairs and show Harry his new room: it's big and airy and bright. It used to be the guest room, the one Uncle's sister slept in when she visited (though she hasn't visited for a while, not after what happened to her dog – ). Harry has a desk with a computer on it like Dudley has and a dresser with a television on it like Dudley has and a bed. Aunt opens the closet and there are clothes hanging there, new ones, not hand me downs.

"Do you like it, Harry?" Aunt asks. There's a run in her voice making it quaver.

"It's very nice," Harry says, which is not _yes_, but no one except the man notices this.

Aunt and Uncle smile, relieved. Dudley's been inching away and he's almost out the door. He's so fat it's ridiculous and Harry wants to put a knife in him and grip the edges and part them to see the skin and the meat and the fat all layered and slick and puffy. He did that with one of the corner woman's fatter cats once and it was _fascinating_.

Dudley's done lots of Wrong things but not any Very Wrong things, Harry doesn't think. The man has made lists for Harry to follow, has taught him a code. Harry probably wouldn't be allowed to kill Dudley according to the code.

"We'll leave you to get settled then, eh," Uncle says, blustering. His face is red and sweating; his eyes are beady, like the backs of beetles. He and Aunt leave. The man stays.

"Will you be good?" the man says.

"I'll try," Harry says.

The man hesitates. Then, he asks, "Do you trust me?"

"I trust you," Harry says.

"Do you believe the things I tell you?"

"I believe you."

"Will you follow the code?"

Harry nods. "Yes. The code helps me be good."

The man smiles at him, but strange, like there's nothing good behind the smile, only horribleness. "I shall see you in a few days, then, my boy. And if you feel as if you can't follow the code, you must write me immediately. Call Fawkes to you and he will come and bring any letter from you to me. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Harry says. There's a pause. Harry doesn't know if he's supposed to hug the man now. He likes the man a great deal, better than he likes anyone else (why does he, _why_, why does he like this man) but he doesn't like to be touched even more.

The man smiles at him like he knows what's in Harry's head, and he does. "I'll just be going then," he says, kindly, taking the dilemma away; and then he _goes_; and Harry feels a little bereft and maybe like he should have hugged the man, anyway, but it's probably for the best that he didn't.

oOoOo

And Harry gets older.

oOoOo

Harry sees the man for an hour every Sunday for years and years, until he's eleven and he goes back to his castle which is also a school where the man is the Headmaster.

The years eight, nine and ten Harry doesn't get to kill a lot of things but he does get to kill some things and it's marvellous, because the man is there with him each time telling him he's doing something good, and Harry can show the person he likes best what he likes best to do, and he shows off a bit sometimes, because he wants the man to be proud of him, but only the first few times because he catches on after the dog that attacked and killed the little girl is gutted and whimpers and takes hours, beautiful _hours_, to die, that the man doesn't like watching the way Harry loves watching.

When Harry is eleven the man takes him shopping for school supplies and then to the train station and shows Harry how to get to Platform 9 ¾ and then says to him, "Good day, my boy, and I'll see you this evening for the Welcoming Feast," and Harry smiles at him, big and bright, his very best imitation (he's been practicing for today).

"Thank you, sir!" he says, and this time he embraces the man before the man leaves, and he's a monster in a little boy suit pretending so hard to be good that for a moment it's almost real, it's almost the truth: that Harry Potter hugs Albus Dumbledore and Albus Dumbledore does not recoil in disgust.


End file.
